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Friday Drabble: The Kid’s Table

A drabble is a very short story of exactly 100 words. Feel free to join in and write your own drabbles on Fridays and tag them with “friday drabble” and on Twitter with the hashtag #fridaydrabble. With Thanksgiving on the horizon this week, this one comes with a double helping – 200 words.

The Kid’s Table

The throne of my humiliation was a folding chair with one of its rubber feet missing, listing before the beat up folding table.

The Kid’s Table.

Of course, the “kids” in question were my cousin and me, both six foot teens but still, as always, the youngest. We sat scrunched over the rickety table like some sort of holiday gargoyles. Everyone else sat at my parents’ circular dining room table.

Even my cousins… we don’t talk much anymore. One a suicide, another on marriage number three and kid number I’ve Lost Count. Even my compatriot at the dreaded kids table is broken and bitter because of an industrial accident and getting by on workman’s comp.

Who could have seen decades into the future? That day everyone was in the moment – celebrating the day and being together. Except for my miserable cousin and me, but not really.

Steve: No jokes this time. This was potent stuff, not just because of the deft handling of the idea, which I’ve come to expect from you, but because of the consistent and convincing “voice” you found for the narrator. There’s an intimacy and rue in the way each line is delivered that really connects to the reader. You’ve really developed as a writer.